SACM and I rented bicycles for a wonderful tour of SF, including, predictably but wonderfully, over the Golden Gate Bridge to Monterey, and all the way back to the Mission and the StrEAT Market.

We did the cable cars and Uber to a boat out in the Bay (dramamine actually worked for me!). Saw the Condor Club and Chinatown and Ghiradeli Square and all that, after we started down to Monterey for the aquarium and beach-going.

A week in the dense, central heart of Panama, the small, narrow pathway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was the memorable international trip I was privileged to get the chance to take on this month.

Panama, a country of less than 4 million people on land less than that of Pennsylvania, is best known for its powerful Panama Canal that was American operated until 1999. Until 1989, it was run by the dangerous despot Manuel Noriega but since then democracy has flourished and, with the New York Times profile in toe, is growing its tourism sector to try to compete with more popular Belize and Costa Rica.

The digital divide will continue to grow as job attainment becomes more web-based and those who fail to access the digital revolution. That’s the central message of a public service announcement campaign from the KEYSPOT initiative from the City of Philadelphia, and, as an issue I care deeply about, I accepted the chance to be included in a photo shoot that has resulted in me landing on that advertising campaign on SEPTA subway cars.

Today, with a Living Social deal of a one-hour safety training seminar and shooting range practice for three people for $75, I did just that at the Gun Range above Spring Garden Street near 10th Street above the Callowhill neighborhood of Philadelphia.

After a half hour of training, I used a half hour of training time, armed with a small, simple, cheap .22 gauge Ruger handgun, with limited recoil at the request of the person with whom I attended. Good experience, I shot fairly well, am more aware and will want to practice more in the future.

As a part of a leadership class, I had the chance to visit the Eagles locker room yesterday.

When you visit the Eagles locker room, everyone stands in line to take pics of the Vick and Desean Jackson lockers. Me? I made a bee line to see the pre game home of 6’10”, 330 lbs offensive lineman King Dunlap

Begun centuries ago by children following the bulls that were being brought from encilliro through Pamplona’s old town to its bullring, last week on Thursday, July 12, 2012 I went Running with the Bullls, one of my original life goals (and one hell of a highlight of a great week in Spain).

It was thrilling and nerve-wracking and crazed and really very quick — less than five minutes of real running and less than a minute of the bulls running by before running into the bullring. Check out some pretty fun video below.

The gruesome, centuries-old tradition of bullfighting was on display, as it is every year, during the annual San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. With friends, I managed to snag the fairly expensive tickets the night before I went running with the bulls.

Like cities across the country, 210,000-person Birmingham, Alabama has a growing creative class pocketed among communities of post-industrialization decline (though some of it remains).

Founded in 1870s after the Civil War while much of the leading Southern cities of the era were in shambles, Birmingham grew up as an iron town, as symbolized by the Sloss Furnaces National Park, an elephant-graveyard of production hidden underneath a highway leaving the city center (it had the nickname of Pittsburgh of the South, for its wide-ranging metal production).

But as Birmingham twisted in the wind in the mid-20th century, other took hold of new industries — Atlanta fought to be a air transit hub. Today, that small creative class — aided in part by the University of Alabama at Birmingham — is helping to fuel a few small pockets of the walkable urban ideal.

Yes, what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than a great long weekend in Birmingham, Ala.